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Zebrafish are a widely utilised animal model in developmental genetics, and owing to recent advances in our understanding of zebrafish behaviour, their utility as a comparative model in behavioural neuroscience is beginning to be realised. One widely reported behavioural measure is the novel tank-diving assay, which has been often cited as a test of anxiety and stress reactivity. Despite its wide utilisation, and various validations against anxiolytic drugs, reporting of pre-test housing has been sparse in the literature. As zebrafish are a shoaling species, we predicted that housing environment would affect their stress reactivity and, as such, their response in the tank-diving procedure. In our first experiment, we tested various aspects of housing (large groups, large groups with no contact, paired, visual contact only, olfactory contact only) and found that the tank diving response was mediated by visual contact with conspecifics. We also tested the basal cortisol levels of group and individually housed fish, and found that individually housed individuals have lower basal cortisol levels. In our second experiment we found ethanol appeared to have an anxiolytic effect with individually housed fish but not those that were group housed. In our final experiment, we examined the effects of changing the fishes water prior to tank diving as an additional acclimation procedure. We found that this had no effect on individually housed fish, but appeared to affect the typical tank diving responses of the group housed individuals. In conclusion, we demonstrate that housing represents an important factor in obtaining reliable data from this methodology, and should be considered by researchers interested in comparative models of anxiety in zebrafish in order to refine their approach and to increase the power in their experiments.

Anxiety testing in zebrafish is often studied in combination with the application of pharmacological substances. In these studies, fish are routinely netted and transported between home aquaria and dosing tanks. In order to enhance the ease of compound administration, a novel method for transferring fish between tanks for drug administration was developed. Inserts that are designed for spawning were used to transfer groups of fish into the drug solution, allowing accurate dosing of all fish in the group. This increases the precision and efficiency of dosing, which becomes very important in long schedules of repeated drug administration. We implemented this procedure for use in a study examining the behavior of zebrafish in the light/dark test after administering ethanol with differing 21 day schedules. In fish exposed to daily-moderate amounts of alcohol there was a significant difference in location preference after 2 days of withdrawal when compared to the control group. However, a significant difference in location preference in a group exposed to weekly-binge administration was not observed.
This protocol can be generalized for use with all types of compounds that are water-soluble and may be used in any situation when the behavior of fish during or after long schedules of drug administration is being examined. The light/dark test is also a valuable method of assessing withdrawal-induced changes in anxiety.

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Regular Care and Maintenance of a Zebrafish (Danio rerio) Laboratory: An Introduction

Institutions: Edith Cowan University, Graylands Hospital, University of Western Australia, McCusker Alzheimer's Research foundation, University of Western Australia , University of Adelaide, Curtin University of Technology, University of Western Australia .

This protocol describes regular care and maintenance of a zebrafish laboratory. Zebrafish are now gaining popularity in genetics, pharmacological and behavioural research. As a vertebrate, zebrafish share considerable genetic sequence similarity with humans and are being used as an animal model for various human disease conditions. The advantages of zebrafish in comparison to other common vertebrate models include high fecundity, low maintenance cost, transparent embryos, and rapid development. Due to the spur of interest in zebrafish research, the need to establish and maintain a productive zebrafish housing facility is also increasing. Although literature is available for the maintenance of a zebrafish laboratory, a concise video protocol is lacking. This video illustrates the protocol for regular housing, feeding, breeding and raising of zebrafish larvae. This process will help researchers to understand the natural behaviour and optimal conditions of zebrafish husbandry and hence troubleshoot experimental issues that originate from the fish husbandry conditions. This protocol will be of immense help to researchers planning to establish a zebrafish laboratory, and also to graduate students who are intending to use zebrafish as an animal model.

The zebrafish has become an important in vivo model in biomedical research. Effective methods must be developed and utilized to deliver compounds or agents in solutions for scientific research. Current methods for administering compounds orally to adult zebrafish are inaccurate due to variability in voluntary consumption by the fish. A gavage procedure was developed to deliver precise quantities of infectious agents to zebrafish for study in biomedical research. Adult zebrafish over 6 months of age were anesthetized with 150 mg/L of buffered MS-222 and gavaged with 5 μl of solution using flexible catheter implantation tubing attached to a cut 22-G needle tip. The flexible tubing was lowered into the oral cavity of the zebrafish until the tip of the tubing extended past the gills (approximately 1 cm). The solution was then injected slowly into the intestinal tract. This method was effective 88% of the time, with fish recovering uneventfully. This procedure is also efficient as one person can gavage 20-30 fish in one hour. This method can be used to precisely administer agents for infectious diseases studies, or studies of other compounds in adult zebrafish.

The Trier Social Stress Test Protocol for Inducing Psychological Stress

Authors: Melissa A. Birkett.

Institutions: Northern Arizona University.

This article demonstrates a psychological stress protocol for use in a laboratory setting. Protocols that allow researchers to study the biological pathways of the stress response in health and disease are fundamental to the progress of research in stress and anxiety.1 Although numerous protocols exist for inducing stress response in the laboratory, many neglect to provide a naturalistic context or to incorporate aspects of social and psychological stress. Of psychological stress protocols, meta-analysis suggests that the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) is the most useful and appropriate standardized protocol for studies of stress hormone reactivity.2 In the original description of the TSST, researchers sought to design and evaluate a procedure capable of inducing a reliable stress response in the majority of healthy volunteers.3 These researchers found elevations in heart rate, blood pressure and several endocrine stress markers in response to the TSST (a psychological stressor) compared to a saline injection (a physical stressor).3 Although the TSST has been modified to meet the needs of various research groups, it generally consists of a waiting period upon arrival, anticipatory speech preparation, speech performance, and verbal arithmetic performance periods, followed by one or more recovery periods. The TSST requires participants to prepare and deliver a speech, and verbally respond to a challenging arithmetic problem in the presence of a socially evaluative audience.3 Social evaluation and uncontrollability have been identified as key components of stress induction by the TSST.4 In use for over a decade, the goal of the TSST is to systematically induce a stress response in order to measure differences in reactivity, anxiety and activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) or sympathetic-adrenal-medullary (SAM) axis during the task.1 Researchers generally assess changes in self-reported anxiety, physiological measures (e.g. heart rate), and/or neuroendocrine indices (e.g. the stress hormone cortisol) in response to the TSST. Many investigators have adopted salivary sampling for stress markers such as cortisol and alpha-amylase (a marker of autonomic nervous system activation) as an alternative to blood sampling to reduce the confounding stress of blood-collection techniques. In addition to changes experienced by an individual completing the TSST, researchers can compare changes between different treatment groups (e.g. clinical versus healthy control samples) or the effectiveness of stress-reducing interventions.1

Institutions: Western University of Health Sciences, Western University of Health Sciences, Western University of Health Sciences.

Zebrafish are a proven model for vision research, however many of the earlier methods generally focused on larval fish or demonstrated a simple response. More recently adult visual behavior in zebrafish has become of interest, but methods to measure specific responses are new coming. To address this gap, we set out to develop a methodology to repeatedly and accurately utilize the optokinetic response (OKR) to measure visual acuity in adult zebrafish. Here we show that the adult zebrafish's visual acuity can be measured, including both binocular and monocular acuities. Because the fish is not harmed during the procedure, the visual acuity can be measured and compared over short or long periods of time. The visual acuity measurements described here can also be done quickly allowing for high throughput and for additional visual procedures if desired. This type of analysis is conducive to drug intervention studies or investigations of disease progression.

High levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) may cause a change of cellular redox state towards oxidative stress condition. This situation causes oxidation of molecules (lipid, DNA, protein) and leads to cell death. Oxidative stress also impacts the progression of several pathological conditions such as diabetes, retinopathies, neurodegeneration, and cancer. Thus, it is important to define tools to investigate oxidative stress conditions not only at the level of single cells but also in the context of whole organisms. Here, we consider the zebrafish embryo as a useful in vivo system to perform such studies and present a protocol to measure in vivo oxidative stress. Taking advantage of fluorescent ROS probes and zebrafish transgenic fluorescent lines, we develop two different methods to measure oxidative stress in vivo: i) a “whole embryo ROS-detection method” for qualitative measurement of oxidative stress and ii) a “single-cell ROS detection method” for quantitative measurements of oxidative stress. Herein, we demonstrate the efficacy of these procedures by increasing oxidative stress in tissues by oxidant agents and physiological or genetic methods. This protocol is amenable for forward genetic screens and it will help address cause-effect relationships of ROS in animal models of oxidative stress-related pathologies such as neurological disorders and cancer.

Exposure to chronic stress is a reliable predictor of depressive disorders, and social stress is a common ethologically relevant stressor in both animals and humans. However, many animal models of depression were developed in males and are not applicable or effective in studies of postpartum females. Recent studies have reported significant effects of chronic social stress during lactation, an ethologically relevant and effective stressor, on maternal behavior, growth, and behavioral neuroendocrinology. This manuscript will describe this chronic social stress paradigm using repeated exposure of a lactating dam to a novel male intruder, and the assessment of the behavioral, physiological, and neuroendocrine effects of this model. Chronic social stress (CSS) is a valuable model for studying the effects of stress on the behavior and physiology of the dam as well as her offspring and future generations. The exposure of pups to CSS can also be used as an early life stress that has long term effects on behavior, physiology, and neuroendocrinology.

Perceptual and Category Processing of the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis' Dimension of Human Likeness: Some Methodological Issues

Authors: Marcus Cheetham, Lutz Jancke.

Institutions: University of Zurich.

Mori's Uncanny Valley Hypothesis1,2 proposes that the perception of humanlike characters such as robots and, by extension, avatars (computer-generated characters) can evoke negative or positive affect (valence) depending on the object's degree of visual and behavioral realism along a dimension of human likeness (DHL) (Figure 1). But studies of affective valence of subjective responses to variously realistic non-human characters have produced inconsistent findings 3, 4, 5, 6. One of a number of reasons for this is that human likeness is not perceived as the hypothesis assumes. While the DHL can be defined following Mori's description as a smooth linear change in the degree of physical humanlike similarity, subjective perception of objects along the DHL can be understood in terms of the psychological effects of categorical perception (CP) 7. Further behavioral and neuroimaging investigations of category processing and CP along the DHL and of the potential influence of the dimension's underlying category structure on affective experience are needed. This protocol therefore focuses on the DHL and allows examination of CP. Based on the protocol presented in the video as an example, issues surrounding the methodology in the protocol and the use in "uncanny" research of stimuli drawn from morph continua to represent the DHL are discussed in the article that accompanies the video. The use of neuroimaging and morph stimuli to represent the DHL in order to disentangle brain regions neurally responsive to physical human-like similarity from those responsive to category change and category processing is briefly illustrated.

Fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) are an established model for both alcohol research and circadian biology. Recently, we showed that the circadian clock modulates alcohol sensitivity, but not the formation of tolerance. Here, we describe our protocol in detail. Alcohol is administered to the flies using the FlyBar. In this setup, saturated alcohol vapor is mixed with humidified air in set proportions, and administered to the flies in four tubes simultaneously. Flies are reared under standardized conditions in order to minimize variation between the replicates. Three-day old flies of different genotypes or treatments are used for the experiments, preferably by matching flies of two different time points (e.g., CT 5 and CT 17) making direct comparisons possible. During the experiment, flies are exposed for 1 hr to the pre-determined percentage of alcohol vapor and the number of flies that exhibit the Loss of Righting reflex (LoRR) or sedation are counted every 5 min. The data can be analyzed using three different statistical approaches. The first is to determine the time at which 50% of the flies have lost their righting reflex and use an Analysis of the Variance (ANOVA) to determine whether significant differences exist between time points. The second is to determine the percentage flies that show LoRR after a specified number of minutes, followed by an ANOVA analysis. The last method is to analyze the whole times series using multivariate statistics. The protocol can also be used for non-circadian experiments or comparisons between genotypes.

Experimental paradigms are valuable insofar as the timing and other parameters of their stimuli are well specified and controlled, and insofar as they yield data relevant to the cognitive processing that occurs under ecologically valid conditions. These two goals often are at odds, since well controlled stimuli often are too repetitive to sustain subjects' motivation. Studies employing electroencephalography (EEG) are often especially sensitive to this dilemma between ecological validity and experimental control: attaining sufficient signal-to-noise in physiological averages demands large numbers of repeated trials within lengthy recording sessions, limiting the subject pool to individuals with the ability and patience to perform a set task over and over again. This constraint severely limits researchers' ability to investigate younger populations as well as clinical populations associated with heightened anxiety or attentional abnormalities. Even adult, non-clinical subjects may not be able to achieve their typical levels of performance or cognitive engagement: an unmotivated subject for whom an experimental task is little more than a chore is not the same, behaviourally, cognitively, or neurally, as a subject who is intrinsically motivated and engaged with the task. A growing body of literature demonstrates that embedding experiments within video games may provide a way between the horns of this dilemma between experimental control and ecological validity. The narrative of a game provides a more realistic context in which tasks occur, enhancing their ecological validity (Chaytor & Schmitter-Edgecombe, 2003). Moreover, this context provides motivation to complete tasks. In our game, subjects perform various missions to collect resources, fend off pirates, intercept communications or facilitate diplomatic relations. In so doing, they also perform an array of cognitive tasks, including a Posner attention-shifting paradigm (Posner, 1980), a go/no-go test of motor inhibition, a psychophysical motion coherence threshold task, the Embedded Figures Test (Witkin, 1950, 1954) and a theory-of-mind (Wimmer & Perner, 1983) task. The game software automatically registers game stimuli and subjects' actions and responses in a log file, and sends event codes to synchronise with physiological data recorders. Thus the game can be combined with physiological measures such as EEG or fMRI, and with moment-to-moment tracking of gaze. Gaze tracking can verify subjects' compliance with behavioural tasks (e.g. fixation) and overt attention to experimental stimuli, and also physiological arousal as reflected in pupil dilation (Bradley et al., 2008). At great enough sampling frequencies, gaze tracking may also help assess covert attention as reflected in microsaccades - eye movements that are too small to foveate a new object, but are as rapid in onset and have the same relationship between angular distance and peak velocity as do saccades that traverse greater distances. The distribution of directions of microsaccades correlates with the (otherwise) covert direction of attention (Hafed & Clark, 2002).

Social behavior depends on sensory input from the visual, mechanical and olfactory systems. One important issue concerns the relative roles of each sensory modality in guiding behavior. The role of visual inputs has been examined by isolating visual stimuli from mechanical and chemosensory stimuli. In some studies (Bruski & Dunham, 1987: Delgado-Morales et al., 2004) visual inputs have been removed with blindfolds or low light intensity, and effects of remaining sensory modalities have been elucidated. An alternative approach is to study the effects of visual inputs in the absence of any appropriate mechanical and chemosensory cues. This approach aims to identify the exclusive role of visual inputs.
We have used two methods to provide visual stimuli to crayfish without providing chemical and mechanical cues. In one method, crayfish are videotaped in an aquarium where half of the walls are covered in mirrors to provide a reflective environment, and the other half are covered in a non-reflective (matte finish) plastic. This gives the crayfish a choice between reflective and non-reflective environments. The reflective environment provides visual cues in the form of reflected images of the crayfish as it moves throughout half of the tank; these visual cues are missing from the non-reflective half of the tank. An alternative method is to videotape the behavior of crayfish in an aquarium separated by a smaller chamber at each end, with a crayfish in one small chamber providing visual cues and an inert object in the opposite small chamber providing visual input from a non-moving, non-crayfish source.
Our published results indicate that responses of crayfish to the reflective environment depend on socialization and dominance rank. Socialized crayfish spent more time in the reflective environment and exhibited certain behaviors more frequently there than in the non-reflective environment; isolated crayfish showed no such differences. Crayfish that were housed in same-sex pairs developed a social rank of either dominant or subordinate. Responses to reflection differed between dominant and subordinate crayfish (May & Mercier, 2006; May & Mercier, 2007). Dominant crayfish spent more time on the reflective side, entered reflective corners more frequently and spent more time in reflective corners compared to the non-reflective side. Subordinate crayfish walked in reverse more often on the reflective side than on the non-reflective side. Preliminary data suggest similar effects from visual cues provided by a crayfish in a small adjoining chamber (May et al., 2008).

Institutions: University of Maryland School of Medicine, Tulane University School of Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, University of Maryland .

The forced swim test is a rodent behavioral test used for evaluation of antidepressant drugs, antidepressant efficacy of new compounds, and experimental manipulations that are aimed at rendering or preventing depressive-like states. Mice are placed in an inescapable transparent tank that is filled with water and their escape related mobility behavior is measured. The forced swim test is straightforward to conduct reliably and it requires minimal specialized equipment. Successful implementation of the forced swim test requires adherence to certain procedural details and minimization of unwarranted stress to the mice. In the protocol description and the accompanying video, we explain how to conduct the mouse version of this test with emphasis on potential pitfalls that may be detrimental to interpretation of results and how to avoid them. Additionally, we explain how the behaviors manifested in the test are assessed.

A Novel Light Damage Paradigm for Use in Retinal Regeneration Studies in Adult Zebrafish

Authors: Jennifer L. Thomas, Ryan Thummel.

Institutions: Wayne State University School of Medicine, Wayne State University School of Medicine.

Light-induced retinal degeneration (LIRD) is commonly used in both rodents and zebrafish to damage rod and cone photoreceptors. In adult zebrafish, photoreceptor degeneration triggers Müller glial cells to re-enter the cell cycle and produce transient-amplifying progenitors. These progenitors continue to proliferate as they migrate to the damaged area, where they ultimately give rise to new photoreceptors. Currently, there are two widely-used LIRD paradigms, each of which results in varying degrees of photoreceptor loss and corresponding differences in the regeneration response. As more genetic and pharmacological tools are available to test the role of individual genes of interest during regeneration, there is a need to develop a robust LIRD paradigm. Here we describe a LIRD protocol that results in widespread and consistent loss of both rod and cone photoreceptors in which we have combined the use of two previously established LIRD techniques. Furthermore, this protocol can be extended for use in pigmented animals, which eliminates the need to maintain transgenic lines of interest on the albino background for LIRD studies.

Underwater submergence produces autonomic changes that are observed in virtually all diving animals. This reflexly-induced response consists of apnea, a parasympathetically-induced bradycardia and a sympathetically-induced alteration of vascular resistance that maintains blood flow to the heart, brain and exercising muscles. While many of the metabolic and cardiorespiratory aspects of the diving response have been studied in marine animals, investigations of the central integrative aspects of this brainstem reflex have been relatively lacking. Because the physiology and neuroanatomy of the rat are well characterized, the rat can be used to help ascertain the central pathways of the mammalian diving response. Detailed instructions are provided on how to train rats to swim and voluntarily dive underwater through a 5 m long Plexiglas maze. Considerations regarding tank design and procedure room requirements are also given. The behavioral training is conducted in such a way as to reduce the stressfulness that could otherwise be associated with forced underwater submergence, thus minimizing activation of central stress pathways. The training procedures are not technically difficult, but they can be time-consuming. Since behavioral training of animals can only provide a model to be used with other experimental techniques, examples of how voluntarily diving rats have been used in conjunction with other physiological and neuroanatomical research techniques, and how the basic training procedures may need to be modified to accommodate these techniques, are also provided. These experiments show that voluntarily diving rats exhibit the same cardiorespiratory changes typically seen in other diving animals. The ease with which rats can be trained to voluntarily dive underwater, and the already available data from rats collected in other neurophysiological studies, makes voluntarily diving rats a good behavioral model to be used in studies investigating the central aspects of the mammalian diving response.

Using an Automated 3D-tracking System to Record Individual and Shoals of Adult Zebrafish

Authors: Hans Maaswinkel, Liqun Zhu, Wei Weng.

Institutions: xyZfish.

Like many aquatic animals, zebrafish (Danio rerio) moves in a 3D space. It is thus preferable to use a 3D recording system to study its behavior. The presented automatic video tracking system accomplishes this by using a mirror system and a calibration procedure that corrects for the considerable error introduced by the transition of light from water to air. With this system it is possible to record both single and groups of adult zebrafish. Before use, the system has to be calibrated. The system consists of three modules: Recording, Path Reconstruction, and Data Processing. The step-by-step protocols for calibration and using the three modules are presented. Depending on the experimental setup, the system can be used for testing neophobia, white aversion, social cohesion, motor impairments, novel object exploration etc. It is especially promising as a first-step tool to study the effects of drugs or mutations on basic behavioral patterns. The system provides information about vertical and horizontal distribution of the zebrafish, about the xyz-components of kinematic parameters (such as locomotion, velocity, acceleration, and turning angle) and it provides the data necessary to calculate parameters for social cohesions when testing shoals.

A Proboscis Extension Response Protocol for Investigating Behavioral Plasticity in Insects: Application to Basic, Biomedical, and Agricultural Research

Authors: Brian H. Smith, Christina M. Burden.

Institutions: Arizona State University.

Insects modify their responses to stimuli through experience of associating those stimuli with events important for survival (e.g., food, mates, threats). There are several behavioral mechanisms through which an insect learns salient associations and relates them to these events. It is important to understand this behavioral plasticity for programs aimed toward assisting insects that are beneficial for agriculture. This understanding can also be used for discovering solutions to biomedical and agricultural problems created by insects that act as disease vectors and pests. The Proboscis Extension Response (PER) conditioning protocol was developed for honey bees (Apis mellifera) over 50 years ago to study how they perceive and learn about floral odors, which signal the nectar and pollen resources a colony needs for survival. The PER procedure provides a robust and easy-to-employ framework for studying several different ecologically relevant mechanisms of behavioral plasticity. It is easily adaptable for use with several other insect species and other behavioral reflexes. These protocols can be readily employed in conjunction with various means for monitoring neural activity in the CNS via electrophysiology or bioimaging, or for manipulating targeted neuromodulatory pathways. It is a robust assay for rapidly detecting sub-lethal effects on behavior caused by environmental stressors, toxins or pesticides.
We show how the PER protocol is straightforward to implement using two procedures. One is suitable as a laboratory exercise for students or for quick assays of the effect of an experimental treatment. The other provides more thorough control of variables, which is important for studies of behavioral conditioning. We show how several measures for the behavioral response ranging from binary yes/no to more continuous variable like latency and duration of proboscis extension can be used to test hypotheses. And, we discuss some pitfalls that researchers commonly encounter when they use the procedure for the first time.

The zebrafish model has emerged as a relevant system to study kidney development, regeneration and disease. Both the embryonic and adult zebrafish kidneys are composed of functional units known as nephrons, which are highly conserved with other vertebrates, including mammals. Research in zebrafish has recently demonstrated that two distinctive phenomena transpire after adult nephrons incur damage: first, there is robust regeneration within existing nephrons that replaces the destroyed tubule epithelial cells; second, entirely new nephrons are produced from renal progenitors in a process known as neonephrogenesis. In contrast, humans and other mammals seem to have only a limited ability for nephron epithelial regeneration. To date, the mechanisms responsible for these kidney regeneration phenomena remain poorly understood. Since adult zebrafish kidneys undergo both nephron epithelial regeneration and neonephrogenesis, they provide an outstanding experimental paradigm to study these events. Further, there is a wide range of genetic and pharmacological tools available in the zebrafish model that can be used to delineate the cellular and molecular mechanisms that regulate renal regeneration. One essential aspect of such research is the evaluation of nephron structure and function. This protocol describes a set of labeling techniques that can be used to gauge renal composition and test nephron functionality in the adult zebrafish kidney. Thus, these methods are widely applicable to the future phenotypic characterization of adult zebrafish kidney injury paradigms, which include but are not limited to, nephrotoxicant exposure regimes or genetic methods of targeted cell death such as the nitroreductase mediated cell ablation technique. Further, these methods could be used to study genetic perturbations in adult kidney formation and could also be applied to assess renal status during chronic disease modeling.

In vivo biomedical research is pivotal to translate in vitro findings into clinical advances. Small academic institutions with limited resources find it virtually impossible to build and maintain typical rodent facilities for research. Zebrafish research has been demonstrated to be a valuable alternative for in vivo research in pharmacology, physiology, development and genetic studies. This article demonstrates that a functional zebrafish facility can be built in an easy and affordable manner. We demonstrate that such a facility could be built in about one working day with minimal tools and expertise. The cost of the 27 1.8 L fish tank zebrafish facility constructed in this study was approximately $1,500. We estimate that the maintenance of an initial working 150 fish colony for 3 months is $1,000. This project involved students, who were introduced to aquaculturing of zebrafish for research proposes.

Zebrafish have become a widely used model organism to investigate the mechanisms that underlie developmental biology and to study human disease pathology due to their considerable degree of genetic conservation with humans. Chemical genetics entails testing the effect that small molecules have on a biological process and is becoming a popular translational research method to identify therapeutic compounds. Zebrafish are specifically appealing to use for chemical genetics because of their ability to produce large clutches of transparent embryos, which are externally fertilized. Furthermore, zebrafish embryos can be easily drug treated by the simple addition of a compound to the embryo media. Using whole-mount in situ hybridization (WISH), mRNA expression can be clearly visualized within zebrafish embryos. Together, using chemical genetics and WISH, the zebrafish becomes a potent whole organism context in which to determine the cellular and physiological effects of small molecules. Innovative advances have been made in technologies that utilize machine-based screening procedures, however for many labs such options are not accessible or remain cost-prohibitive. The protocol described here explains how to execute a manual high-throughput chemical genetic screen that requires basic resources and can be accomplished by a single individual or small team in an efficient period of time. Thus, this protocol provides a feasible strategy that can be implemented by research groups to perform chemical genetics in zebrafish, which can be useful for gaining fundamental insights into developmental processes, disease mechanisms, and to identify novel compounds and signaling pathways that have medically relevant applications.

Fear of certain threat and anxiety about uncertain threat are distinct emotions with unique behavioral, cognitive-attentional, and neuroanatomical components. Both anxiety and fear can be studied in the laboratory by measuring the potentiation of the startle reflex. The startle reflex is a defensive reflex that is potentiated when an organism is threatened and the need for defense is high. The startle reflex is assessed via electromyography (EMG) in the orbicularis oculi muscle elicited by brief, intense, bursts of acoustic white noise (i.e., “startle probes”). Startle potentiation is calculated as the increase in startle response magnitude during presentation of sets of visual threat cues that signal delivery of mild electric shock relative to sets of matched cues that signal the absence of shock (no-threat cues). In the Threat Probability Task, fear is measured via startle potentiation to high probability (100% cue-contingent shock; certain) threat cues whereas anxiety is measured via startle potentiation to low probability (20% cue-contingent shock; uncertain) threat cues. Measurement of startle potentiation during the Threat Probability Task provides an objective and easily implemented alternative to assessment of negative affect via self-report or other methods (e.g., neuroimaging) that may be inappropriate or impractical for some researchers. Startle potentiation has been studied rigorously in both animals (e.g., rodents, non-human primates) and humans which facilitates animal-to-human translational research. Startle potentiation during certain and uncertain threat provides an objective measure of negative affective and distinct emotional states (fear, anxiety) to use in research on psychopathology, substance use/abuse and broadly in affective science. As such, it has been used extensively by clinical scientists interested in psychopathology etiology and by affective scientists interested in individual differences in emotion.

Institutions: Dr. William M Scholl College of Podiatric Medicine, Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science.

Due to the clinical importance of hearing and balance disorders in man, model organisms such as the zebrafish have been used to study lateral line development and regeneration. The zebrafish is particularly attractive for such studies because of its rapid development time and its high regenerative capacity. To date, zebrafish studies of lateral line regeneration have mainly utilized fish of the embryonic and larval stages because of the lower number of neuromasts at these stages. This has made quantitative analysis of lateral line regeneration/and or development easier in the earlier developmental stages. Because many zebrafish models of neurological and non-neurological diseases are studied in the adult fish and not in the embryo/larvae, we focused on developing a quantitative lateral line regenerative assay in adult zebrafish so that an assay was available that could be applied to current adult zebrafish disease models. Building on previous studies by Van Trump et al.17 that described procedures for ablation of hair cells in adult Mexican blind cave fish and zebrafish (Danio rerio), our assay was designed to allow quantitative comparison between control and experimental groups. This was accomplished by developing a regenerative neuromast standard curve based on the percent of neuromast reappearance over a 24 hr time period following gentamicin-induced necrosis of hair cells in a defined region of the lateral line. The assay was also designed to allow extension of the analysis to the individual hair cell level when a higher level of resolution is required.

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) are a rare population of pluripotent cells that maintain all the differentiated blood lineages throughout the life of an organism. The functional definition of a HSC is a transplanted cell that has the ability to reconstitute all the blood lineages of an irradiated recipient long term. This designation was established by decades of seminal work in mammalian systems. Using hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) and reverse genetic manipulations in the mouse, the underlying regulatory factors of HSC biology are beginning to be unveiled, but are still largely under-explored. Recently, the zebrafish has emerged as a powerful genetic model to study vertebrate hematopoiesis. Establishing HCT in zebrafish will allow scientists to utilize the large-scale genetic and chemical screening methodologies available in zebrafish to reveal novel mechanisms underlying HSC regulation. In this article, we demonstrate a method to perform HCT in adult zebrafish. We show the dissection and preparation of zebrafish whole kidney marrow, the site of adult hematopoiesis in the zebrafish, and the introduction of these donor cells into the circulation of irradiated recipient fish via intracardiac injection. Additionally, we describe the post-transplant care of fish in an "ICU" to increase their long-term health. In general, gentle care of the fish before, during, and after the transplant is critical to increase the number of fish that will survive more than one month following the procedure, which is essential for assessment of long term (<3 month) engraftment. The experimental data used to establish this protocol will be published elsewhere. The establishment of this protocol will allow for the merger of large-scale zebrafish genetics and transplant biology.

Optokinetic response (OKR) is a behavior that an animal vibrates its eyes to follow a rotating grating around it. It has been widely used to assess the visual functions of larval zebrafish1-5. Nevertheless, the standard protocol for larval fish is not yet readily applicable in adult zabrafish. Here, we introduce how to measure the OKR of adult zebrafish with our simple custom-built apparatus using a new protocol which is established in our lab. Both our apparatus and step-by-step procedure of OKR in adult zebrafish are illustrated in this video. In addition, the measurements of the larval OKR, as well as the optomotor response (OMR) test of adult zebrafish, are also demonstrated in this video. This OKR assay of adult zebrafish in our experiment may last for up to 4 hours. Such OKR test applied in adult fish will benefit to visual function investigation more efficiently when the adult fish vision system is manipulated.
Su-Qi Zou and Wu Yin contributed equally to this paper.

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